I know it is a long time ago, but I will take the Committee back, if I may, to 25 November 2015, when George Osborne, as he is now known, was the Member for Tatton and serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. At that time, he said—it was recorded in Hansard:
“We will bring forward reforms to the compensation culture around minor motor accident injuries, which will remove… £l billion from the cost of providing motor insurance.”
And here is the crucial bit:
“We expect the industry to pass on this saving, so that motorists see an average saving of £40 to £50 per year off their insurance bills.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1367.]
When this Bill was introduced to the House of Lords and subsequently to this place, the Ministry of Justice’s impact assessment indicated at first that the figure would now be £40, not £50—not between £40 and £50, but £40. However, when the general election was fought last year, the figure had miraculously gone from £40 to £35.
In October last year, one of the insurance companies that the Minister in another place, Lord Keen of Elie, has been fond of quoting—Liverpool Victoria or LV=—spoke. Caroline Johnson, director of third party and technical claims at LV=, spoke at the Motor Accident Solicitors Society’s annual conference in Sheffield, which must have been an important place to say this; it was not just said off the cuff, but at the conference. She said, “The £35 may or may not be achievable”.
I ask my first question today in support of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield and to start the testing of the Minister’s new clause. In his response, can the Minister give the latest Government assessment of what the £50/£40/£35/possibly-not-achievable £35 is as of today? We are expected to take on trust the figures that he has given.
There is no doubt that the insurance companies will save £1.3 billion a year. That figure has been accepted by the Government and the insurance companies, and I suspect that it will be cited again—not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield, but by others who will say that it is the saving, the prize, that the Government seek. My concern is not the insurance companies and the £1.3 billion; my concern is how much, if there are savings to be made in the areas we are concerned about, of that £1.3 billion will land in the pockets of those individuals who would then have lower premiums as a result.
I am very pleased to sit on the Justice Committee, just as I was very pleased to sit coterminously this morning with this Committee; I have to say that was very interesting. The Justice Committee carried out an investigation into this area and came to a conclusion as a whole—it was not just the Labour members of that Committee. It is chaired by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who is a Conservative; it has a Conservative majority; and it has unanimous support for the recommendations it made in this very area. The Committee said:
“As obtaining insurance involves a commercial transaction with a private sector body...there is little that the Government can do to enforce lower premium rates without significant change to present policies.”
My question to the Minister is about his proposed new clause 2. There is something I cannot find in it—it may be hidden in there within the legalese—but, if it is, could he please put it in simple language for the Committee? What happens if this investigation proves that the insurance companies have made a saving of anything between nothing and £1.3 billion? What steps will the Government take at that stage to enforce their policy objective of ensuring that £50/£40/£35/possibly £35 goes into the pockets of individuals who pay the insurance companies?
Government new clause 2 says the assessment will be made on 1 April 2024. Half this Committee might  be dead by then—that is just under five and half years  from now, and I hope we are all here to see it. I have been round the goldfish bowl a couple of times already this year on Bill Committees; I cannot remember what I did last year on some Committees because we are busy people in this House. Who is going to hold the Government to account on 1 April 2024 when it comes to the report produced by the Financial Conduct Authority, put into effect by the Government’s proposed new clause 2?
I want the Government today to say not just that they will publish that report, but that they will put that report forward for debate in the House, whoever is in the House on 1 April 2024, and agree some mechanism. The Minister could outline that now because he has six years to find out how to work it before this report comes out. Will he outline to the Committee today what mechanism he is going to put in place to force the insurance companies to give back any premiums that they might be making as a result of these savings?
We are talking about the Parliament after next, in 2024. I do not want to turn up at some future Parliament when, if everything in proposed new clause 2 goes hunky-dory, an insurance company comes along and says to the Financial Conduct Authority, “We’ve made £300 million or £500 million; we’ve saved £1.3 billion.” What are the Government going to do or say when that figure comes out? I cannot find it. It might be in here hidden away, but I would like the Minister to tell me what the Government are going to do if a figure of surplus, as a result of these savings, is made, and it has not been returned to consumers.
I would like to know what rigour the Government are going to put in place with the Financial Conduct Authority, to ensure that it is rigorously examining the costs and services. If I were a smart insurance company, I would find some costs to show that actually, although I may have saved £1.3 billion on this, I have had difficult challenges such as renewed claims, and this and that. I am not involved in the insurance industry. I could probably, if I spent the next week thinking about it, find 10 reasons why my costs had increased and that £1.3 billion had been subsumed.
The Minister has a duty to tell the House, with regard to proposed new clause 2, what he expects the Financial Conduct Authority to do. The whole premise of the Government’s proposal has been that this is going to stop insurance companies from having extra costs, and those extra costs are going to be passed on to us—to everybody who has a car—in saved premiums.
The Government’s figure, with which I started my contribution, has gone from £50 in November to £15 to £35 now, with the insurance companies themselves saying that £35 may or may not be achievable. “May or may not” is quite a loose phrase; “may or may not” means we do not yet know what the figure is. I would like to know from the Minister not just what we are going to find out on 1 April 2024: whenever this legislation is enacted, there will be a period between then and 1 April 2024. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield’s proposal says we should look at the figures earlier than 2024. I would like to know what the insurance companies are saving in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 or 2023—and, indeed, in 2024.